This image is one of those that came about purely by luck. I was in Sydney for the first time in October 2012, and made my way over to this area one evening so I could photography the Harbor Bridge and Opera House at sunset. Having accomplished that, I started to pack up my gear for the walk back to my hotel when a local security guard suggested I wait around a few minutes. Turns out that a major multinational corporation was having a big party that night and had arranged a fireworks display in front of the Opera House. Fifteen minutes later the fireworks started heading into the sky. What a beautiful sight! I photographed as much as possible over the next 20 minutes, capturing several great images.

Happy New Year!  I hope everybody had a great and safe time ringing in 2013 yesterday.  I myself had a great evening with family, as we all huddled around the fireplace and space heaters, since the furnace in the house died a few days ago.  Yeah, it was cold, but still fun and relaxing.

Even though I’ve done a few test posts on this site over the past few weeks, I feel that today’s post is the first “official” blog entry.  The site is basically up and running, with almost all the secondary content up and visible.  Over the coming weeks I’ll be adding more Galleries, but for now you can view galleries for both China and Turkey.  Honestly, I need to figure out how to better export the gallery images from Lightroom; they seem a bit soft and fuzzy to me, whereas the originals are all tack sharp.  That’s the long way of saying I might replace the China and Turkey images with better versions in the near future.  But, for now, they will do.

Today’s Photo of the Day is quite appropriate, as Sydney’s New Year’s fireworks display is world famous.  I heard on the news yesterday that it cost $7 million this year.  While this image was not captured during a New Year’s celebration, it was just as exciting to see and experience.  Hopefully next year I’ll be able to witness Sydney’s New Years firework exhibition in person.